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Domino’s and Ford Are Testing How Diners Respond to Robot Pizza Delivery

Skift Take

While the thrill of a driverless car delivering a pizza is interesting, there's no way the economics will ever beat using a minimum-wage worker driving his or her own late-model compact.

— Jason Clampet

Driverless pizza delivery will take a test spin of sorts in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as Domino’s Pizza Inc. and Ford Motor Co. team up to research reactions to robots bringing dinner to the driveway. / Bloomberg

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Driverless pizza delivery will take a test spin of sorts in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as Domino’s Pizza Inc. and Ford Motor Co. team up to research reactions to robots bringing dinner to the driveway.

But while the hot pies will arrive in an autonomous-capable Ford Fusion, there will still be a company engineer at the wheel, manually driving the car through the streets of the Midwestern city that is home to the University of Michigan. The goal of the partnership is to examine how customers react to stepping out of their homes and walking to the car to fetch their pizza from a locked warming compartment, rather than having it carried to their doorstep.

“We’re interested to learn what people think about this type of delivery,” Russell Weiner, president of Domino’s USA, said in a statement. “The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience. For instance, how will customers react to coming outside to get their food?”

For Ford, the Ann Arbor experiment that will take place over the next several weeks is a chance to look at new ways to meet its promise to have self-driving cars on the road by 2021. New Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett has indicated he wants Ford to do more than just build robot taxis, as originally envisioned by his predecessor Mark Fields, who was ousted in May for moving too slowly. Hackett is considering delivery of goods such as food as another potential revenue source for autonomous autos.

“As we increase our understanding of the business opportunity for self-driving vehicles to support the movement of people and goods, we’re pleased to have Domino’s join us,” said Sherif Marakby, Ford’s vice president of autonomous and electric vehicles, who recently returned to the company after spending a year working on self-driving vehicle research at Uber Technologies Inc.

Customer Reaction

Although fully equipped with autonomous sensors, the cars will not be in self-driving mode because the research focuses on customer reaction to robot pizza delivery, rather than proving the driverless technology, said Alan Hall, a Ford spokesman.

“This phase of the research is not about the autonomous driving capability of getting from Point A to Point B,” Hall said in a phone interview. “It’s about creating that last 50-feet scenario and observing how customers will interact with the vehicle. Does it need to park at the curb, or do you have to be in the driveway?”

Once customers walk out to the vehicle, they’ll punch in a unique code on a tablet near the car’s back door that will unlock a heated compartment that can hold up to four pizzas and five sides. Cameras on the car and inside the warming compartment will capture how the customer retrieves his or her order.

During the trial, Domino’s customers in Ann Arbor will be randomly selected to have their pizza delivered in this way. Customers who agree to take part in the test will be able to track their pizza as it rolls through the streets via an app on their phones.

The one-month trial “is the first step in an ongoing process of testing that we plan to undertake with Ford,” said Patrick Doyle, Domino’s president and CEO.